Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Canada’s financial system is less transparent than Russia’s, report says

Spot the beneficial owner

Canada has one of the most secretive financial systems in the world, according to a new report, less transparent than Russia and China, and offshore tax havens like Cyprus, Bermuda, and Barbados.

Financial experts say this is an indication Canada is, effectively, one of the world’s more attractive “onshore tax havens.”

The Tax Justice Network (TJN) — an independent international research and advocacy network focusing on tax evasion and tax havens — released its Financial Secrecy Index on Tuesday.

The index, produced every two years, measures the extent to which a country’s legal system facilitates global financial crimes such as money laundering and tax evasion.

Canada is No. 21 on the list, slightly higher than its 2016 ranking at No. 23. The higher the ranking, the more financially secret a country is.

“It’s a bad exam grade on the state of the country’s financial secrecy laws,” said Arthur Cockfield, a tax law scholar and policy consultant at Queen’s University. “It means that if you’re a crook or a super rich person who wants privacy, then you can use our corporate laws to hide the identity of the ultimate owner of the shares (of your company).” (more...)